Two events in Britain are about to catch the world’s attention: the royal wedding and next month’s general election. Yet both these quintessentially British occasions have been eclipsed by the death in a faraway land of an elderly Pole of whom we know next to nothing.

No death has been awaited for as long as that of John Paul II. The press had been warming up the obituaries and tributes for years. Yet when the pope finally expired last Saturday, nobody expected such an outpouring of emotion – least of all in England, the land of the stiff upper lip.

Last night, the Prince of Wales announced that he was postponing his wedding, scheduled for Friday, because the pope’s funeral was to be held on the same day. The prince realized that not only would his event be unable to compete in global coverage stakes, but many of his guests had cancelled in order to be at the papal obsequies.

While the usual response to the impending royal nuptials is a shrug, the pope’s death has seemingly left few untouched. It has also brought political campaigning to a sudden halt.

Prime Minister Blair had intended to visit Queen Elizabeth on Monday to request a dissolution of Parliament, the formality that precedes the election of a new one. But Mr. Blair, sensing the somber mood in the country, decided that it was the wrong moment to announce an election. Instead, he decided to spend yesterday afternoon attending a commemorative service in London, and he will also interrupt campaigning to attend the pontiff’s funeral. Out of respect for John Paul II, the British political system has been put on hold.

Such an official reaction to the death of a pope is unprecedented. Let me explain why it is also unexpected.

First, the English normally find religion embarrassing. An invocation of God by someone who actually believes in him is, for most Britons, a worse faux pas than any blasphemy.

It takes quite a lot for any spiritual leader to arouse the interest, much less the admiration, of a country that was appalled by the spectacle of the American president and the British prime minister saying prayers together.

Why this unease at any overt display of religiosity? America has no established religion, yet many Americans are deeply religious. The English, by contrast, have an established religion, but are among the most secular nations on earth. (The Scots, Welsh, and Irish are another story.) Despite the fact that the queen is head of the Church of England, only a minority of the English ever set foot in an Anglican church. If, as William Blake once imagined in his visionary hymn “Jerusalem,” Jesus were to set foot in “England’s green and pleasant land” today, he would be treated as possibly crazy and certainly a foreigner.

The second reason why the British reaction to the pope’s death has been so extraordinary is that, though this country is largely indifferent to religion, it has a long tradition of anti-Catholicism. Today this usually takes a secularist form. My children were fascinated by the wall-to-wall coverage of the pope, but wondered why they had had to wait until his death to learn about him. The BBC had not shown a balanced documentary for at least 17 years. Hitherto, the British press and broadcast news had taken the most instantly recognizable and charismatic figure on the world stage completely for granted. His conservatism made him a regular target, and so for the liberal intelligentsia, his posthumous popularity comes as a surprise.

The roots of this anti-Catholicism lie deep in English history. Of the five centuries that have passed since Henry VIII’s break with Rome, Catholics have been emancipated for less than two. Good Queen Bess (Elizabeth I) had lots of them martyred, and even at the time of American independence, anti-papist mobs were terrorizing London. Even today, Under the Act of Settlement, Catholics cannot marry a monarch, nor by extension his or her heir.

As I arrived at the Foreign Office last night, all the flags in Westminster and Whitehall were at half-mast. I asked a minister (whose background happened to be Polish-Jewish) whether this was normal. No, he thought, it was a special gesture to a unique figure. A former British ambassador to the United Nations disagreed: He thought the reaction was “sentimental and overdone.”

Plenty of liberals agree with the diplomat. But outside the M-25 (London’s beltway), there is a consensus that extends from Christians to Jews, from atheists to evangelicals: This was the greatest man of our time, and we were fortunate to be his contemporaries.